steppin' out

even though it's still winter, it's been a little warmer the last couple weeks and the sun has even come out a few days and we've been taking advantage of it. 

 

we got the kids a kite for christmas and madeleine has been begging to fly it ever since. randy tried to do it with them once right after christmas, but it wasn't windy enough. now, pretty much every day, madeleine looks out the window and says, "i think the trees are moving! can we fly the kite?"

usually, it is not nearly windy enough, and even when it has been, it is rainy, or jonathan is awake and randy is teaching, or the kids have been sick - it just hasn't worked out yet. it was kind of sad, last sunday, madeleine looked longingly out the window and said, "it isn't windy, it's raining, daddy is at church, we are sick, jonathan is awake, AND it's sunday! we really can't fly the kite today."

but, yesterday, randy had a light day of teaching and it was actually windy outside (not terribly windy, but enough), so he took the girls out to try out their new kite. the girls loved it and ran around the neighborhood singing, "let's go fly a kite!" from mary poppins at the top of their lungs. jonathan and i watched from the deck. 

new tricks

jonathan is growing and changing so quickly right now. he started taking steps about a month ago, but in the last week he's really started walking everywhere. he stands up in the middle of the floor on his own if he falls down and gets going again. he has also started clapping lately and he walks around the house clapping. his other new trick is playing peek-a-boo. he'll do it by the side of our bed, or use a blanket, or just cover up one eye with one hand and kind of squint the other eye closed. it's really adorable. i've been trying to get videos of all his new tricks and finally caught them all. here they are:

peek-a-boo:

clapping:

walking:

he's all boy

i didn't think that having a boy would be all that different until he was older. babies are all the same, right? wrong. jonathan is all boy. i am amazed at how quickly i have seen differences between him and my girls. he plays differently, he is more aggressive, he is into more, and he loves to climb everything. and it's really fun. 

lately, he loves to climb up onto diane's bed and pretends to read books.

and boy, does he love stairs. i can't keep him off of them. i am constantly chasing him up the stairs. it's good exercise. 

he also loves to play up on the landing and stick his hands through the safety netting i put up (which he definitely needs). see all of that lovely drool? we are in the throes of teething again. he's fine during the day but nights are miserable.

what a cutie. we love our boy.

january phone photos

 

here are all of the blurry pictures from my phone that i'm bad about uploading. some i've already posted on instagram (which i love, by the way), so if you follow me on that as well, sorry for the duplicates.

my kids love the feature of the phone camera that lets you turn it around so you can see yourself on the screen. 

i love this boy's scrunchy face.

the next few pictures are of jonathan eating a pickle. we were playing the game, "show me your pickle face," at dinner, which consisted of everyone eating a pickle and making silly sour faces. we decided to give jonathan his first pickle and thought that it would be hilarious, especially given his reaction to applesauce, but he defied our expectations and ate the whole thing as if it were no big deal.

while counting down the days until my mom's visit, she started doing a countdown on instagram and the girls wanted to do their own. here are some of the pictures from the countdown:

six

five

four

three

two

one

i got my haircut a couple weeks ago.

jonathan playing with my mom's birthday balloons.

randy's grandmother is downsizing and i was the lucky recipient of her sewing cabinet. it folds down into a table and has great storage space for all of my sewing supplies. it is a beautiful, solid wood piece and i love it.

diane got some fairy wings and other fairy accessories from her grammy for her birthday. here she is prancing around in front of the mirror.

i took these pictures of madeleine giggling the morning before the tooth incident. at least i got one last good picture of her adorable little smile (it's still adorable).